1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to interface control, and more particularly, to a apparatus using a single driver, a computer system including an apparatus using a single driver, and a related method.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Within computer systems nowadays, buses are essential, for example: ISA, PCI, PCI EXPRESS. Peripheral devices complying with the bus specification have become very popular. In order to save the number of interface slots occupied within a computer system, products such as interface cards are often implemented having multiple interface devices to meet end-user requirements.
Each interface device on the interface card requires a driver, which is a control program adaptive to the computer system where the interface card is installed. If one of the interface devices of the interface card needs the cooperation of another of the interface card, the two drivers for both interface devices involved and an additional driver for controlling the two drivers are required. Furthermore, if parameters related to calculations of both interface devices need to be transferred between the two interface devices, programmers will be required to add this functionality to the drivers and to debug these drivers while programming. As a result, programming the drivers of the multiple interface devices of the interface card is more complicated than programming a driver of a single interface device.